


existential hymns of closed doors and unwalked paths

by codenamecynic



Series: It came from the tumblr-verse [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Marriage, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 19:46:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4192623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codenamecynic/pseuds/codenamecynic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To be a Hawke is to be in love with love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	existential hymns of closed doors and unwalked paths

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to a writing prompt challenge by servantofclio on tumblr

She often wonders how her life would have been different if she’d opened that door.

No one tells her that she’s foolish, not in so many words, but she can see the disapproval lurk behind her mother’s eyes.  It sits cool and quiet like a pebble at the bottom of a pond, slowly covered over by time and the silt of fallen leaves and sand kicked by little feet – but nonetheless it is there, waiting, as if for a flood. 

To be a Hawke is to be in love with love.  The daughter of romantics whose passion defies the laws of man and other more mortal dangers, she grows into womanhood knowing that love is  _difficult_.  Love is not meant to be easy, and more than anything - love is not meant to be convenient.

(Her mother’s disappointment is a vast lake behind a dam that breaks when her father dies, as though he was the last crumb of mortar holding slippery stones together.)

Her head gets harder, her skin thinner, stretched taut over muscles that teach themselves how to be strong.  The image of paths untaken fades, merging in her memories like tributaries into a great river until  _what was_  cannot be separated from  _what is_ , and  _what might have been_  becomes as distant as the horizon over her left shoulder. She no longer wonders what lies behind doors she never sought to open in the first place.

She never regrets turning him down, though, the perfectly suitable boy with the cowlick and the slow, wide smile.  Not every girl wears white silk with grace, and not every girl wants to.  Not all naked fingers covet rings, nor ears the sound of chantry bells. 

(Some wrists do wait for red fabric to bind them, but that isn’t something she discovers until much later…)


End file.
